The Financial Benefits of Leaving HP

HP’s stock may have plummeted by 45 percent during the eleven months that Leo Apotheker was at the helm, but a Securities and Exchange Commission filing shows that he walked away from the tumult a wealthy man—not quite as wealthy as he could have been had HP flourished, but comfortable nonetheless.

Apotheler’s compensation package comes to $22 million, or $2 million for every month on the job. (psst, HP, I’ll ruin your business for an order of magnitude less…)

The package includes $7.2 million in severance pay, accelerated vesting of stock worth about $3.6 million, and additional stocks worth about $10 million. The most questionable payment, however, is an estimated $2.4 annual bonus for HP’s “pay-for-results” program.

As noted earlier, stock value went down 45 percent in Apotheker’s tenure, or roughly $50,000 for every percentage point it dropped.